15. The Boy Who Found Shelley

Summary

The Unforgotten – Episode 15: The Boy Who Found Shelley

Release Date: May 12, 2025
Podcast: The Unforgotten (Free Range Productions)
Season 1: The Labor Day Ghost
Hosts: Carol Dawson and Wes Ferguson

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Episode Overview

This bonus episode, subtitled "The Boy Who Found Shelley," explores a pivotal and haunting moment in the investigation of Shelly Salter Watkins’ murder: the discovery of her body in the Trinity River, Texas, in 1993. The episode focuses on the rarely heard firsthand account of one of the three fishermen—then teenagers or young men—who made the grim discovery, and reveals new details that challenge previous assumptions and published facts about that day. Through intimately reported storytelling, the hosts reflect on the emotional, investigative, and legal impact of this moment, and ask for community help in filling remaining gaps in the record.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Search for the Fishermen

• Significance of Identifying the Witnesses:
  Carol shares her long-held curiosity about the identities of the young fishermen who found Shelley’s body. She saw their account as vital for understanding the crime and its impact:

  “Anybody who came across Shelley in that terrible condition was never going to forget…it was not only a profound discovery, but a very meaningful discovery in other ways, because they were the ones who undid whatever the murderer had tried to do, and that was to erase Shelley's presence and identity from the surface world forever.” – Carol Dawson [02:22]

• Research Process:
  The hosts explain their methodical effort to comb through a list of 75+ witness names from the prosecutor’s files, contacting people one by one, and leveraging local knowledge and online databases to track leads.

  “I just took all the names…and I really focused in on the ones that had lived in that general area of the Trinity river where Shelly was found.” – Wes Ferguson [06:45]

• Role of Spouses as Connectors:
  Wives often acted as intermediaries, helping the hosts reach reluctant or elusive men involved in various stages of the case. This episode’s interview became possible through the fisherman’s wife [08:07].

Mark’s Firsthand Account (the Fisherman)

• Background:
  "Mark," a pseudonym, was 18 and newly married, with a baby on the way. He and two friends, early 20s, launched a borrowed boat to fish from the FM 85 bridge [09:11].
• Discovery Details:
  • Around midday, after failing to go upstream due to low water, they headed downstream and spotted a new chain wrapped around a black trash bag, snagged mid-river [11:19].
  • On investigating, they broke open the bag with a paddle and immediately saw the body, face down, with long blonde hair mostly detached and floating away [12:12].

    “The back of the head, all the hair had already come off, just about.” – Mark [12:12]

  • The body was only lightly clothed (Gold's Gym crop top, shorts), partially decomposed after six days in the water. Notably, she had two toenails left, both on big toes, still painted [14:24].
  • Mark and his friends sped to shore, notified a friend (whose boat they’d borrowed), and called 911 from Seven Points. They eventually helped law enforcement recover the body [12:55-14:16].
  • The detail about the precise location led to a crucial jurisdiction determination:

    “They measured to where...it was right in the middle. Six inches on Henderson [County].” – Mark [18:14]

Contradictory Timelines and Details

• Timing of the Discovery:
  Mark is clear the body was found between noon and 3pm, while dispatcher Christy Warrick and others recall evening/nighttime [16:52-17:14].

  “We didn’t have watches or Showtime back then, so, you know, we looked at the sun.” – Mark [17:14]

• Nature of the Body's Wrapping:
  Contrary to reports of construction plastic, Mark says it was a trash bag tied around her waist, likely inflated with decomposition gases [16:12].
• Jurisdiction:
  Mark’s experience suggests law enforcement was careful and collaborative in determining (by inches) which county the case belonged to, countering stories of a jurisdictional tug-of-war [18:14].

Emotional Impact & Reflections

• Trauma of Young Witnesses:
  The hosts dwell on the psychological toll, especially for teenagers:

  “Can you imagine what that would be for an 18 year old and a couple of 20 year olds to come across something like that? It would just stamp your brain for life, as it clearly has for Mark.” – Carol Dawson [19:47]

• Crucial Legal Consequence:
  The measurement—just six inches into Henderson County—determined who prosecuted the case, ultimately resulting in a DA’s resignation and prison for corruption.

  “Everything followed from those six inches. So I cannot help but consider half a foot to be a crucial twist of fate.” – Carol Dawson [19:47]

• Unanswered Questions:
  • The autopsy described a furrow around the neck, typically a strangulation sign, but with no broken hyoid bone. Carol wonders if an additional ligature was used on the neck, not recovered:

    “…that furrow could have come from…a purse strap or a thin rope or something handy once she received the eight violent blows to the back of her head…” – Carol Dawson [23:42]

  • Mark’s account suggests only bindings to the waist and ankles; he recalls nothing around her neck [24:16-24:50].

Appeal to the Community

• Call for More Information:
  Carol requests listeners’ confidential input on two points: who took possession of Shelley’s white BMW after her death, and how soon it was seen in public. Privacy is assured [28:04].

Meta-Reflection on True Crime Reporting

• The hosts reinforce their commitment to accuracy—sharing no unsubstantiated rumors or information (“part of the bargain”), but promising disclosure when possible for transparency’s sake.

  “We’re not sharing any rumors, gossip, secondhand information, and also there are things that are too sensitive to talk about right now, but…we will release them when the time’s appropriate.” – Wes Ferguson [27:01]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the search for witnesses:
  “It was a really big deal to try to find those three fishermen and have them…recount their experience to us.” – Carol Dawson [02:22]
• On the trauma for young discoverers:
  “It would just stamp your brain for life, as it clearly has for Mark.” – Carol Dawson [19:47]
• On the improbability of the discovery:
  “If Mark and his friends hadn’t decided to go fishing that day…she probably would have been swept away and who knows if she would have ever been found.” – Wes Ferguson [14:46]
• On the smell and vivid memory:
  “It's a smell you never get, you know.” – Mark [14:16]
• On precise jurisdiction:
  “Everything followed from those six inches. So I cannot help but consider half a foot to be a crucial twist of fate.” – Carol Dawson [19:47]
• On the limits of reporting:
  “We’re not sharing any rumors, gossip, secondhand information, and also there are things that are too sensitive to talk about right now…” – Wes Ferguson [27:01]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:12 — Episode framing: the search for the “boy” who found Shelley.
• 02:22-06:45 — Carol on her lifelong obsession with discovering the fishermen’s identities and why their account matters.
• 06:45-08:07 — Wes describes the research process of tracking down possible witnesses; the key role of “Mark’s” wife in making the interview possible.
• 09:11-10:44 — The lead-up to discovery; Mark’s background and the initial boat trip.
• 11:19-12:28 — The moment of discovery in the river.
• 13:11-14:46 — Interaction with law enforcement, physical recovery of the body, autopsy details.
• 16:12-17:10 — Mark counters published accounts on the wrapping material and time of discovery.
• 18:14-18:43 — Jurisdiction determined by precise measurement—six inches.
• 19:47-25:27 — Carol and Wes’s analytical discussion: trauma, legal consequence, questions on autopsy findings.
• 28:04 — Carol’s community appeal for confidential information on Shelley’s car.

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Conclusion: Episode Tone & Takeaway

The episode is compassionate, methodical, and deeply invested in respecting the humanity of both the victim and those touched by her tragedy. The hosts emphasize meticulous investigation, emotional resonance, and community participation, leaving listeners with haunting details, unanswered questions, and a sense of the ripples that one discovery sent through many lives.

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If you have information about Shelley's case or her car, the hosts encourage confidential contact through the podcast's website or social media.

Transcript

[Mark (the fisherman)]

So we was going down the river there. There's a little.

[Wes Ferguson]

When you saw it, did you think, well, that looks like a body?

[Carol Dawson]

Hi, I'm Carol Dawson.

[Wes Ferguson]

And I'm Wes Ferguson.

[Carol Dawson]

And we are here to bring you another bonus episode of The Unforgotten Season 1, the Labor Day Ghost. The story above and around the murder of Shelly Watkins in my hometown of Corsicana, Texas.

[Wes Ferguson]

This is the boy who found Shelley.

[Carol Dawson]

Wow. The title of this is extremely poignant to me because as our listeners will be hearing in the course of this conversation, the three fishermen who actually found Shelly Watkins body in the Trinity river were very, very young.

[Wes Ferguson]

Yeah. We recently learned that they were all teenagers or in their early 20s. And when I joined this project, I knew that we would do anything we could to find the fishermen who discovered Shelley's body in the Trinity river that day over 30 years ago. But their names had never been mentioned in any of the newspaper articles. The people that we knew and that we had reached out to didn't know their names. You know, we spoke to the 911 dispatcher who took that call, and she didn't know either. But we did find in the case files a sheet of paper that had a long list of potential witnesses that might have been called up to testify in the case. That was something the prosecutors were legally required to provide to the defense attorneys for Shelley's husband, Jerry Mack Watkins. But it was just a list of names, no identifying details or anything. But we figured that three of those names were probably those fishermen. And so you and I just went down the list trying to find every single person and reaching out to them. And by doing that, we did find a lot of other interesting people that had connections to this case, but we didn't find those fishermen. And I was wondering if you could talk about why that matters, like why go to so much trouble to find these fishermen who found Shelley?

[Carol Dawson]

Well, absolutely. One of the things that has intrigued me for the past 28 or 29 years now, since I have spent that amount of my life focusing on this case and being haunted by it, was the fact that I knew three fishermen had found a. I always pictured them as maybe three middle aged guys who had gotten through with work for the day and had then met up to go for a little fishing excursion. And I had always wondered who they were because their official names were locked in the ongoing investigation report that was in the possession of the sheriff of Henderson County. And of course, they. There was no way that they were going to disclose any of those records or reports. To you and me. So when I first saw that long list of names the prosecutors provided as state witnesses in the case file, we're Talking more than 75 names, I literally started going through it one by one, because anybody who came across Shelley in that terrible condition was never going to forget, was going to mark their lives forever. And it was not only a profound discovery, but it was a very meaningful discovery in other ways, because they were the ones who undid whatever the murderer had tried to do, and that was to erase Shelley's presence and identity from the surface world forever. So it was a really big deal to try to find those three fishermen and have them, if they would speak with us, recount their experience to us, because we also knew that they could provide details about that discovery, that the other people we have interviewed who came upon the scene later, like quite a bit of time later in the day, after the three young fishermen had found her, they were going to have a very different point of view and a different experience. But for those first three fishermen, one of the essential points that really, really struck me was exactly where in the river they might have found her. And you and I can talk about that later in this episode because it is such a crucial point. But the thought of these three guys, whatever their ages were, whoever they were, coming across this woman's body has reminded me a lot of the fate of Ophelia in Hamlet. Ophelia, who, of course, was the young woman who drowns Hamlet's former girlfriend, and she winds up drowned and is found in a stream. And more and more, I have been thinking about Ophelia both as you and I, Wes, have worked on this podcast, and because of the book that I'm writing about this story, because of this long hair that the fishermen encountered when they first found the body. That image has just stuck with me so strongly. And yet it was an image that was not particularly well described in any of the newspaper articles or. Or the testimonies that we encountered. It was unique to these three fishermen. I do want to add that going through that long list of state's witnesses involved trying to identify a number of people I didn't know, as well as recognize the names of a number of people I did know, stretching from way back all the way into my childhood. For instance, the name Roy French, who. That was the name of a guy who owned a service station on Second Avenue in Corsicana. And so to cull through all of those names to try to figure out the ones most likely to be the fishermen was quite an interesting task. For me. And of course, you came at it from much more of an outsider's point of view. So you and I really had to collaborate on that. But you were the one who found him.

[Wes Ferguson]

Yeah. So I just took all the names, and I certainly didn't recognize the vast majority. But then I looked them all up in online databases, finding their contact information, where they had lived over the years, and I really focused in on the ones that had lived in that general area of the Trinity river where Shelly was found. I figured if these guys are fishing in the river, they probably live in one of the neighboring communities. And it turns out that in all the voicemails I left, one of those actually did get through to one of the fishermen who was there that day, but he was out of town on a job and didn't ever call me back. Obviously, the podcast came out. Our first season came and went. And then not too terribly long ago, I finally heard from this gentleman's wife, and I think she sent me a Facebook message. And so she and I exchanged quite a few messages, had a long running conversation. He travels a lot for work, obviously, I travel a lot. But finally, earlier this year in March, we were able to get together and have lunch, and he was able to tell me the entire story of that day. And so coming up after the break will have the story of the boy who found Shelley.

[Carol Dawson]

I would just like to throw one other thing in, and that is the fact that this fisherman's wife was the go between who managed to hook you guys up together. And of course, you went through all those names and did that huge research. But there have been several different instances in which wives have become the go betweens for you and me in the process of trying to talk to some of the men or the husbands who have figured largely in this entire process that we've engaged in. And I can think of four right off the bat, including this latest one. So, wives out there, if your husbands had any kind of thing to do with Shelly Watkins murders discovery process investigation, please feel free to contact us and hook us up with your husbands in the best sense.

[Wes Ferguson]

Before the podcast came out, Carol and I tried really hard to locate the fisherman who discovered Shelly Watkins body in the Trinity river on September 13, 1993. The case file for the murder indictment against Shelly's husband, Jerry Mack Watkins, provided a long list of potential witnesses. We figured that a few of those names probably belonged to the fishermen. We tried to contact every one of them. Later, I learned that at least one of the voicemails I left was Indeed, for a fisherman who was on the Trinity river that day, a day he's never forgotten, he didn't want us to use his name, otherwise he was extremely forthcoming. And his memories contradict some of the details we'd read in the newspaper or were told by other witnesses. Of course, Carol and I have committed from day one to tell the most accurate, complete and unbiased story possible. So sharing what he remembers is our chance to correct the record. First, though, a warning. The fisherman's story involves some disturbing details you may not want to know about, especially if you were a friend or loved one of Shelley's. Please listen with care. I'm going to call the fisherman Mark, since he didn't want us to use his name. He was 18 years old at the time, recently married to his high school sweetheart, and they were expecting their first daughter In a borrowed boat. Mark and his two friends, who were both a couple years older, put into the river at the FM 85 bridge west of the community of Seven Points.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

We used to put down air fishing, catfishing. Sometimes you catch a big old oar just to bite it in.

[Wes Ferguson]

Mark had grown up nearby. He traveled that stretch of the Trinity often and knew all of the best fishing holes.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

Oh, yeah, he was always doing that. Yeah, I fished all over Cedar Creek, Lake, Kings Creek, Trinity River.

[Wes Ferguson]

Mark remembers it being around midday. First they tried to go upstream, but the river was too low for them to boat over some little dams called weirs and in that direction. So they turned around and headed downstream, dodging tree limbs that rippled the water.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

I don't know, it's pretty good ways you can, if you own a bridge, you can see literally make a left hand turn. When it turns like that, there's a big deep hole right there.

[Wes Ferguson]

Around a Bend, about 200 yards from the bridge, they saw a galvanized chain that looked brand new wrapped around a black trash bag in the middle of the river. And it snagged on something and was bobbing in the water.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

So we're going down the river, but you see this, like, chain.

[Wes Ferguson]

He and his friends circled back to investigate. They poked the bag with a paddle and it came right open. They knew immediately that they'd found a human body. She was face down. Her blonde hair now the color of dirty dishwater, had come off. It began to float away.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

The back of the head, all the hair had already come off, just about.

[Wes Ferguson]

It was floating away. Of course, Mark and his friends knew they needed to report this dead body right away.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

It's a body right there from, oh High telling. Like to throw this out of the boat when it hit the bank. I don't think we had to drag the boat on the bank. Yeah, I remember you telling me you ran us on the bank.

[Wes Ferguson]

Then they piled into the pickup truck. They parked beneath the bridge and drove to the house of a friend in Seven Points, that nearby town that the.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

Boat there hauled up. You know, caretaker a friend of ours wondered it was his boat, you know, where's my boat at?

[Wes Ferguson]

They called 911 and spoke to Christy Warrick, a dispatcher who just started her shift.

[Carol Dawson]

I do remember the call. I will never forget the call. The one gentleman said they were fishing on the Trinity river and they had found a body.

[Wes Ferguson]

Then Mark and his friends came back to the bridge and they waited. Several law enforcement officers responded to the scene. Mark remembers seeing Henderson County Sheriff Slick Alfred. We also know that Texas Ranger Ray Nutt came. Mark and his friends helped game warden Rick Thomas and the other lawmen load their boat into the water. Mark and one friend waited at the bridge. Meanwhile, their other friend got into his own boat and he led the lawmen down the river to Shelly's body. They couldn't get Shelly into the body bag in the water. So they lifted up the concrete blocks that had been used to weigh her down and they put those blocks in the boat that belonged to Mark's friend and. And he slowly dragged Shelly back up to the bridge. While Mark held the game warden's boat steady, the lawmen got Shelly out of the water. Got to be the kind of thing that you don't forget.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

Oh no. In the back. And then boy, we like to think we didn't put her in the body bag or laid the body bag put up there portrait taking all the creatures.

[Carol Dawson]

Dogs.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

I think I was holding the Gamboard boat. Another guy was holding the other boat and just got it downwind. And it's a smell you never get, you know.

[Wes Ferguson]

Mark couldn't tell if she was a man or a woman or even what race she was. But she was wearing a Gold's Gym crop top and athletic shorts. She only had two toenails left, both of her big toes. And he saw that they were polished.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

That is would have pretty sad ending there. Six days in the water.

[Wes Ferguson]

Shelly's body was sent to the medical examiner's lab in Dallas for the autopsy. And Mark and his friend were taken to the police station in Seven Points where they gave written statements about their discovery. A few days later, Mark remembers a heavy rain fell on the upper reaches of the Trinity. The river flooded. If Mark and his friends hadn't decided to go fishing that day, it, if the river hadn't been too shallow for them to boat upstream like they'd wanted, they never would have found Shelly's body. She probably would have been swept away and who knows if she would have ever been found.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

And that, that's come up several times on different things like, yeah, I wouldn't have found that. You know, two days later. Nobody ever found that funny. You know, the river would have been up. We'd been able to go higher up to fishing hose of a mud.

[Wes Ferguson]

Talking to Mark gave us an opportunity to verify details of the story we've learned through interviews with other people from old newspaper accounts and from case files. Mark set the record straight on a few things. Nothing hugely consequential, but of course we want to be as accurate as possible. Here they are. Shelly's brother in law had told us that her body was wrapped up in plastic construction sheets. Mark says no, he says it was a large black trash bag that seemed to be tied up around her waist and it had inflated from the decomposition gases.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

It was like a trash bag. Right. And it's almost like it was tied around the waist.

[Carol Dawson]

Right.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

So I guess all the gases and then the bloating of the body, it was like floating there.

[Wes Ferguson]

Okay, here's another thing that's a little different. Dispatcher Christy Warrick remembers getting the 911 call in the early evening. She was working nights at the time and had just started her shift. Game warden Rick Thomas also remembers it being in the evening, around 9 or 10 o' clock at night when he got the call asking for him to bring his boat to the river. Is that about when you're sitting in your La Z, boy, or getting into bed or what? What do you, what were you doing?

[Mark (the fisherman)]

Just, I think, I think I was watching tv.

[Wes Ferguson]

But Mark the fisherman remembers things a little differently. He says he and his friends found Shelly's body and called 911 in the middle of the day, sometime between noon and 3pm and he was pretty adamant about that.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

I'm going to say midday, Noonnoon, noon to 3 o'.

[Carol Dawson]

Clock.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

Suburbs there. We didn't have watches of Showtime back then. So, you know, we looked at the son.

[Wes Ferguson]

We can't be sure who was right, but it was 11pm when the Justice of the peace filled out the official inquest form. So we know that they were working late that night. And here's the last thing. The investigation into Shelley's death was complicated by jurisdiction issues. We've talked a lot about this in the podcast, how Shelly lived in Navara county, but Mark and his friends found her body on the Henderson county side of the river. We'd heard that there was some jockeying between the counties because neither side wanted to get stuck with the case. But Mark doesn't remember it that way. He says the law enforcement officers on the scene carefully measured the location in the river where Shelly was found, and they determined that way that Henderson county had jurisdiction.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

One guy went down with a pig member in Savar County. They went down to there and verified it was a party. Yeah, I guess they measured to where because of right in the middle. Six inches on Henderson.

[Wes Ferguson]

Did you see him doing the measurement?

[Mark (the fisherman)]

No, you couldn't see.

[Wes Ferguson]

Yeah. He says they took this responsibility very seriously. It sound like they were trying to put it on each other. You know, Henderson kind of said, no.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

No, he was going to get the body. You know, it wasn't so much. It was like, oh, you, you need to get it. You know, it wasn't anything like that.

[Wes Ferguson]

But there's been some jokes about that, you know, like, we don't want it, y' all should take it. You don't. That kind of.

[Mark (the fisherman)]

I didn't hear anything like that.

[Carol Dawson]

Thank you, Wes. That was extremely informative, I'm sure, for our listeners as well as for me. And after the break, let's talk about some of the key takeaways that we gained from this particular interview and the different points of view. And there are a couple of details that really tease my brain about it. So I hope that all of you people out there keep listening. There's more.

[Wes Ferguson]

So, Carol, we've just heard the story of the fisherman. We're calling him a boy because he was 18. So the boy who found Shelley, what are the main takeaways and questions that you have after hearing his first person account of that day?

[Carol Dawson]

Well, of course, one of the things that just shocked me to pieces was the fact that he was 18 years old. He was on the cusp of manhood. He had already taken on a man's responsibilities. He had married his high school sweetheart. They were about to have a baby. But on the other hand, can you imagine what that would be for an 18 year old and a couple of 20 year olds to come across something like that? It would just stamp your brain for life, as it clearly has for Marx. There were a couple of things that have come up for me in the course of this. One of them is what he had to say about the measuring that law enforcement did you mentioned the Henderson county side of the river and the law enforcement officers who showed up on that side? You have not mentioned Navarro County. And we know for a fact that there were some law enforcement officers from Navarro county who showed up also. And we know that they very carefully measured. Thanks to Mark, we know this. Just how far Shelley was from either bank of the river. And it turns out that it was six inches. Why does that matter? For one thing, I have really wondered just how did they do that measurement? Did they measure from the precise middle of her spine where it was located? Did they measure from the. The distance from the snag that she was on? How did they come up with such a very small differential? And why does that matter? It matters because everything that happened in this case after that measurement was determined meant the entire fate of the case, meant the entire way that the case was going to get litigated and tried. It meant that it fell into the hands of a DA who eventually had to not only resign his position, but went to prison for corruption over this case. Everything followed from those six inches. So I cannot help but consider half a foot to be a crucial twist of fate. I would really love to know exactly how they determined where those six inches lay. What were they measuring from? Another thing that came up for me is something that has really, really teased me ever since the original conversation that we had with the medical examiner in Dallas, who interpreted the entire autopsy report for us so fluently and scientifically, and so specifically, because one of the things the autopsy report describes is a furrow around Shelley's throat. He describes the width of the furrow. He describes the placement of the furrow. He said that is usually a sign of strangulation. We know that Shelley's hyoid bone in her throat was not broken, which is what usually happens with a severe case of strangulation. I have wondered if perhaps there was yet another ligature on top of the ones that were binding her ankles, and as the fisherman described, the middle of her body, where she was chained and roped to those two cinder block weights. I've wondered sometimes if perhaps another ligature had been secured around her throat to weight her down, and if that's where that furrow could have come from. Or on the other hand, whether it had come from something like a purse strap or a thin rope or something handy once she received the eight violent blows to the back of her head that probably caused a brain bleed, according to the medical examiner, if perhaps that ligature signified an attempt to. To make sure that she was shut up and gone for good. If it was actually an instrument in part to assist her murder.

[Wes Ferguson]

Right.

[Carol Dawson]

I guess that is a question we're probably never going to get answered. But it sure has bothered me ever since I learned about the ligature, and I have never stopped wondering about it. And unfortunately for us, Mark was quite specific in what he had to say about the condition Shelley's body was in and where the fastenings were. And he says specifically around her waist, so around her torso.

[Wes Ferguson]

And then she had one around her. Her legs too.

[Carol Dawson]

Right around her ankles, yes.

[Wes Ferguson]

It seems like if she had a rope around her neck in the water too, if she still did when she was found, that would have been documented in the autopsy report, but it seems like that wouldn't have probably slipped off in the water, you know, so it seems to suggest that would have happened before she was disposed of in the Trinity.

[Carol Dawson]

That certainly is the way I've always taken it, but I really wanted to give as objective a view as possible in terms of speculation and just to throw in the benefit of the doubt.

[Wes Ferguson]

Yeah, it's all very speculative, but I think there's still a chance that we'll find that out because, you know, as more people come forward, I'm sure that there are people out there. Maybe it's someone who has some first hand knowledge of that when she was found, or maybe the spouse of someone who has firsthand knowledge who can encourage that person to speak to us. And then also as the case progresses, if, if we find resolution to the case, then those files will be unlocked and then we'll have the complete story at that point.

[Carol Dawson]

That's right. I would like to add that so many of our wonderful listeners have been willing to share some of their direct experiences, eyewitness experience, information that was told to them, all these different factors that have to remain for now, off the record. But I promise that some of those experiences a bit further on down the line, with the permission of people who shared them, will be included in a more on the record form, if not in the book I write, then perhaps that the podcast can cover. We thank all of you people who are so willing to throw off the shadow of your fears and finally come forward and share so much direct experience and information that you happen to know with us. Because all of it builds picture.

[Wes Ferguson]

I know that as a true crime listener, it can be frustrating when you hear me and you saying like, oh, we know these things and we're not going to tell you what they are. That's unfortunately just part of the bargain because we're not sharing any rumors, gossip, secondhand information, and also there are things that are too sensitive to talk about right now, but we're building those up and we'll have them and we will release them when the time's appropriate. Thank you so much for listening to this bonus episode and thank you to all of you who subscribed, whether that's in your podcast feature player, if you use Apple or Spotify or YouTube or whatever. And also thank you to the people who subscribe to our newsletter. At unforgottenpod.com we have a free version and a paid version, five bucks a month, and that gives you early access and you get to hear the episode without ads. That's a great way to support our work. And however you support us, we're grateful to you and we hope to be back soon.

[Carol Dawson]

Once again, thank you all so much for contributing your information to our pool of knowledge regarding this case. I have an extra request that I'd like to make to everybody out there who's listening, and I just want to assure you that if you do answer either of these two questions, you will receive total confidentiality from us. And your name and the name of the person that you might mention will never be disclosed, publicly or otherwise. It's just a piece of information that happens to fit into a larger pattern that is growing more and more evident in the whole picture of Shelley Watkins murder. You can get in touch with us through Facebook messaging or through other forms of social media. You can contact unforgottenpod.com you can look on Instagram. We're out there. We're accessible. So these are my two questions. Number one, can any of you confirm the name of the new owner or driver of Shelley's white BMW after her death? And number two, how soon after the murder was it that this person was seen driving the car around Corsicana or elsewhere? We would really appreciate confirmation. And once again, I would like to emphasize that your name and the name of the person that you might mention will never be disclosed. It just goes into the picture of a larger pattern. Thank you.

[Wes Ferguson]

Beyond Forgotten is a Free Rage production Season one the Labor Day Ghost was written and created by Carol Dawson and me, Wes Ferguson. This episode was edited by Aislin Gaddis and me. Check unforgottenpod.com for all the latest updates on this case. Thank you for listening.